


The Properties of Dust

by feeling-quilly (the_quiller)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: And Classes, And Quests, And Sans doesn't play by the rules, Except for grey and gray morality is in play, Gender-Neutral Chara, Gender-Neutral Frisk, Lots of backstory, Modern Fantasy World, Multi, Post-Soulless Pacifist Route, References to Genocide Route, So Levels, The Surface Also Runs on Video Game Rules, alot of violence ahead, bad times all around, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-06-07 21:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6825841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_quiller/pseuds/feeling-quilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if there was a magical shortcut to success? A way to gain fame and fortune beyond your wildest dreams? To raise your STR, DEX, CHA, LUK and INT to superhuman levels? Once upon a time, you could jump into a dungeon with nothing but a sword and emerge as a hero with the wealth of a king and the power of a demigod.</p><p>All it took was a couple handfuls of dust.</p><p>It's almost too bad no one's seen a monster in a thousand years, huh?</p><p>(<em>'Do you think an entire race can change, if they just try?' Sans still asks, even if the answer has already been carved into his bones and written in his dust a thousand times. It's pointless, he knows, but NPCs have always been doomed to repeat dialogue.</em>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >BEGIN: PROLOGUE  
> >NEW CUTSCENE UNLOCKED
> 
> >PLAY? ( ♥ Y / N )

_Year 14XX_

The setting sun gleamed red like blood on the curve of helmets and the tips of spears as his people filed into their prison between two neat lines of soldiers.

Heads down. Feet dragging. Silent save for the muffled cries of children. Monsters did not leave corpses nor dig graves, but he could not help but compare their internment to the human custom of burying the dead. He had traded all the wealth in his kingdom - every piece of gold, countless artifacts and treasures, spell tomes, powerful swords, enchanted armors, every reasonably valuable piece of loot in they could muster - for this mockery of mercy. He had damned his own people to a slow death of suffocation instead of a quick death by the sword.

From time to time, a monster in the line would simply fall down mid-step in a small puff of dust as their HP fell to zero. The procession would halt, briefly, as their family gathered up the remains before continuing onwards with stony faces. For those who fell and had no loved ones left to gather up their dust, there would be an awkward pause before the nearest stranger with enough kindness knelt down to scoop up the glittering grains and scatter them to the winds. Perhaps they were the luckiest – in death, at least, they had the freedom of the sky.

He watched until he could bear to watch no longer. In shame, he hung his head.

Someone else’s paw gently touched his. There was no comfort to be found, but his queen’s voice was comforting all the same.

“Raise your head. Our people still live. You found a path where there was only darkness ahead. There is no shame,” she said.

“There was another way,” he replied, refusing to meet the gentle look he knew he would find in her eyes. “If only I was not a coward.”

She gave his paw a firm squeeze.

“Would I have married a coward?” she asked. “A coward would have chosen to become the very same beast that the humans hunt us for being. Your kindness and integrity is what will guide our people true, no matter how many years we must weather. We _will_ endure.”

He squeezed back, his voice a barely coherent croak as he fought back the burning feeling in his eyes.

“What would I do without you, Tori?”

She said nothing, but the warmth of her paw in his was more reassuring than any words could ever be.

The king blinked away the blur in his eyes and straightened as the last of his people disappeared into the darkness of the cave. It was time.

The human mages began chanting the words that would seal their fate. Even with seven LV 20 mages casting together, the sealing spell still took three turns to cast.

It was his turn. Hand in hand with heads held high, the king and queen of monsters walked between two lines of enemy soldiers with the same dignity they walked the halls of their own castle. Their people waited at the mouth of the cave, their eyes all watching as the turn ended.

The spell began to shimmer as the power of human SOULs poured into it. The second turn came and went.

Every eye turned to the sky. The setting sun, the cloudless expanse of reds and oranges, the shimmering golden scales on the distant waves, the last caress of the easterly winds – every monster seared this last glimpse of freedom into their memories, before it was swallowed up by a flash of white.

The last turn ended. It was done. They were trapped.

They were safe.

Asgore closed his eyes and turned away.

Perhaps, one day, when humanity was kinder and wiser, monsters would see the sky once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just setting the tone. The real events start rolling into motion in the next chapter, and it's all downhill from here, so hop aboard for this runaway train wreck if this is your jam.


	2. Don't Fear the Reaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >SELECT CHARACTER:  
> LV 9 ASSASSIN [XXXX XXXXX]  
> SUB CLASS: SCRIBE
> 
> >QUEST OBJECTIVE:  
> Kill the monsters’ ambassador (0/1)
> 
> >REWARD:  
> +1500 EXP  
> +150000 GOLD  
> +10 FAME  
> +1 ABILITY POINT
> 
> >PLAY? (♥ Y / N )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Trigger warning for drowning and character death. This is most definitely NOT a friendly Sans/Reader chapter.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - FILE LOADED - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

If there was one thing you would miss the most about this place, it would be the golden flower tea in the teacher’s lounge. Even a single sip warmed you right down to your toes and filled your heart with an incredible sense of wellbeing. You’ve been completely ruined for all other drinks; going back to cheap, instant coffee after months of this heavenly brew was going to be hell.

You took small sip and savored it slowly as you waited for Toriel’s reply.

“Summer camp? Is it different from normal camping?” the kindly goat monster asked, but the sparkle of curiosity in her eye told you that you had already hooked her interest. Now all you needed to do was reel it in.

“It’s a little more work for us, since we’d still be teaching classes, but we can also do activities like bird-watching, nature hikes, making star charts, things like that. It’s a good chance for the kids to learn some independence and responsibility too, with being away from home and doing camp chores,” you explained. You’d rehearsed this, with carefully chosen words to make it sound as appealing as possible. You added your clincher, “Besides, I noticed some of the students seem to have trouble learning inside the classroom, so I figured, maybe some hands-on experience will help them out.”

She looked pensive for a moment before her face broke into a smile, “Well, in that case, it sounds like a fine idea.” Then she looked over your shoulder and asked, “What do you think?”

Your heart lurched into your throat as a deeper voice spoke up right behind you, “i dunno, tori. it’s not what i’d call a good time.”

You peered over your shoulder, and sure enough, there was a short skeleton standing next to the teapot with a steaming mug of tea in his hands, despite the fact that you hadn’t heard the sound of the door being opened or tea being poured. Goddammit, this was the fifth spot check you’d failed just this week. How did he _keep doing that_? Your own search and stealth skills should be high enough to instantly alert you of someone standing in your blind spot. Your life literally depended on it, and the thought that even a low-level monster could sneak up on you so easily was really throwing you off your game.

You schooled your expression into a careful neutrality.

“Why not?” you asked.

His eye lights flickered over to you and glowed unnervingly bright as he said, “things could get a little too _in-tents_ , dontcha think?”

“Sans,” Toriel scolded, but the faint hint of amusement in her face took all the bite out of her tone. “Please, be serious. I’m sure the children _wood_ love it. It’d be a nice end of the year _tree_ -t for everyone.”

“a buncha monsters outside the city zone might be a treat for the wrong sort of people.”

“Oh,” Toriel said, her face falling, “Do you…do you still think we’d be in that much danger?”

No, no, no. This was exactly what you didn’t want her thinking about. It was impossible to initiate combat within town or city limits, except during rare events like siege or invasion. Ever since Ebott City had granted monsters citizenship rights, they were protected by the nonaggression wards just like anyone else. The fact that they rarely left the safe zone was making your mission stupid hard, and this over-observant skeleton was about to reset all your progress.

“There hasn’t been an incident in months,” you argued, “and a school trip would be beneath their notice anyway. Besides, letting fear trap you here is as good as letting them win. You can’t see the stars from inside the city – you might as well be back underground.”

Both monsters in the room stiffened. You were treading on dangerous ground, but if the alternative was wasting five entire months of groundwork, well, you had to pull out all the stops.

To your surprise, it was Sans who relented first. His grin softened a little around the edges, and he rubbed the back of his skull sheepishly before saying, “welp, when you put it like that…”

He mulled things over for a moment, then said, “should be fine if we pick an out of the way camp site. pretty sure i can talk alphys into setting up some surveillance cams for us as well, and if we bring one of the dogs along, they’ll smell anyone suspicious from a mile away. the kiddos won’t be in any danger.”

Toriel looked hesitant, before she, too, relented.

“Alright. But we’ll let the parents have the final say,” she said sternly, “and safety always comes first.”

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - FILE SAVED - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

“hey, i’m headed to grillby’s. wanna come?” Sans asked, leaning against the doorway to your office and tapping his finger against the wood to get your attention.

You gave him a flat glare, looked meaningfully at the piles of paper littering your desk, and then looked back at him. You didn’t have the time or patience to deal with his usual antics.

He just shrugged and said, “it’ll still be here when ya get back.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose and inwardly counted back from ten. Throttling a fellow teacher would jeopardize your mission. Carving the word ‘SLACKER’ into his skull with a letter opener probably wouldn’t do you any favors either. Dialogue was your only option.

“The camp starts tomorrow. I need to get all the grades in by tonight,” you explained crossly.

“tell you what,” he said, stepping into your office now, “come to grillby’s, and i’ll help ya finish up.”

Wait. Was he…offering to do more work? For a moment, you stared at his unflinching grin, expecting some sort of punchline. He seemed to read the incredulity in your gaze, because his grin only widened and he held out a hand, saying, “no trick. you in? offer expires in three…two…”

“Deal,” you caught yourself saying against your better judgment.

His grin widened to shit-eating levels.

“cool. i know a shortcut.” 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - FILE SAVED - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 “fast shortcut, huh?”

You gaped. One moment, you were in your office, and the next, you were standing in the doorway of Grillby’s. How were you supposed to react to a coworker casually revealing that he could teleport? All of those failed spot checks, those near heart attacks his jump-scare appearances had caused you – he could fucking teleport. That was just…such a broken ability, one he could have used to get away with _murder_ , and he used it to play stupid pranks and get to his favorite grease joint faster.

“hey grillbz,” Sans was already sliding onto a stool at the open bar, “two orders of the usual.”

You took the stool next to him and barely spotted the whoopee cushion in time to pick it up and chuck it at his head.

He caught it with a loud ‘ _pfffthb_ ’ and winked cheekily as he tucked it away in his ratty blue jacket.

“so, anyway, this camping trip. all the kids seem pretty excited about it. frisk hasn’t talked about anything else all week, and my bro’s been beggin me to let him come along.”

You pretended to be inspecting the cleanliness of the bar counter. You didn't know why you were expecting something different. His brother and his pseudo-adopted-sibling-slash-child-Frisk were all he ever seemed to talk about. It had been helpful, at first. Knowing your target's quirks and personality were key to making a successful hit. This late in the game, however, the skeleton had no new information to offer, and for some reason, hearing him talk about your target with so much affection stirred up a sick feeling in your stomach.

“I’m glad to hear that,” you said, injecting as much false sincerity into your tone as possible.

“heh. i guess what i’m tryin to say is, thanks. you’ve made a bunch of kids real happy,” Sans said, “this would never have happened without ya.”

“It’s nothing special. I’m just doing my job,” you replied. It lessened the uncomfortable knot in your stomach, a little bit, to tell the truth without actually telling the truth.

Sans waved a hand dismissively.

“nah, take it from a guy who’s a pro at skating by with the bare minimum; most other humans in your shoes wouldn’t have bothered with half the stuff you did. you can fool a supervisor, but you can’t fool the kids. they all look forward to your class, yanno? can’t get outta mine fast enough to get to yours.”

The knot in your stomach writhed tighter.

“That’s got nothing to do with who’s teaching,” you scoff, secretly wishing he would just drop the subject already. “Every kid hates math and likes story time.”

He retorted, “but not every teacher reads twenty different books just ‘cause they let every kid pick a different one for a book report.”

“That’s…” you began, then cut yourself off, frowning. You had done that simply because you didn’t want to deal with any upset, unhappy kids, and because your Scribe subclass gave you a 3x boost to researching speed. It had nothing to do with actually caring. You…actually, why _did_ you go through the trouble of reading all of those books? You could have just slapped random grades on the papers and saved yourself loads of time. So why didn’t you?

Because it wouldn’t be fair to them? Because you were curious which books your students had picked?

No, you just needed to put up a good façade in order to convince the monsters to trust you. The more you overachieved, the faster they would let go of their initial suspicions.

But if that was true, why had it been so important to finish grading everything before you left for camp anyway? It's not like it would matter anyway. You weren't really a teacher, and you didn't really care whether or not the students' grades were done in time for their end-of-term report cards. You would be long gone by then. So...why?

You barely noticed the food arriving, as realization hit you like a ton of bricks.

You'd gotten complacent. It was too easy, living out these idyllic days. Monsters were trusting, friendly, and naïve. Compared to the high risk, betrayal filled world that you had come from, the peaceful days spent undercover as a teacher were kind of... _nice_. You were surrounded by people who wore their hearts on their sleeves, and you had never realized how much of a difference it made, between second-guessing everyone's intentions and simply being able to trust that what someone said was exactly what they meant. Monsters were all like that - predictable, guileless, and safe.

In fact, the only monster you couldn't quite read was sitting next to you, and even he seemed intent on making overtures of friendship despite your repeated rebuffs.

Something must have showed on your face, because Sans let out a low chuckle and said, “nailed it, huh? guess you do care, under all that prickliness.”

"You don't know what you're talking about," you denied. It sounded even less convincing out loud than it did in your head.

“hey, don’t sweat it, bucko. i know the feeling,” Sans continued, giving you an unhelpful pat on the back. “i never thought i’d be a teacher either. but it’s not so bad. good tea, bad jokes, and nice friends – dunno about you, but it’s all a bag of bones like me really needs.”

In that moment, you hated him, because his words were making your resolve waver.

You could see imagine it all too easily. Slow afternoons spent grading papers and sipping golden flower tea. Laughing together in the teachers’ lounge about the latest antics of the class clowns. Flashing a thumbs up from the back of the room as a kid finished showing off their illustration project, and watching their face light up. Going to Grillby’s together with all your colleagues to celebrate the end of exam hell week. You could have a good life here. The monsters would never ask you about your past; if you just let it go, no one would ever need to know.

But then you’d never level up again. All your hard earned skill and experience, wasted. All the godlike abilities that were only unlocked at the highest levels, out of your reach forever.

Could you really…just give it up?

“welp, i’ve said my piece,” Sans said, pushing away an empty plate that you hadn’t even noticed him finishing. He left a handful of coins on the counter and got to his feet, fixing you with a strangely intense stare that left you with the feeling that, behind his ever-present smile, he wasn’t smiling at all.

“just think about it, alright? because those kids really care about ya.”

Then he gave a jaunty little wave and walked out the door, disappearing as soon as his foot crossed the threshold. You were left alone with your cold food and even colder thoughts.

When you got back to your office an hour later, it turned out Sans had kept his word. All the papers were graded, and all the grades had been entered.

There was nothing left for you to do except think about what you were going to do next. 

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - FILE SAVED - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You let the first day of camp pass you by.

And the second. And the third, the fourth, the fifth.

It was the night of the sixth, final day, and your very last chance. Everyone would be driving back first thing tomorrow morning.

Camp had been a runaway train wreck. You had never seen so many happy, exhausted, and utterly filthy children in one place. They had gotten mud and leaves everywhere. Dinner had been a daily disaster, especially with Undyne and Sans’s brother Papyrus using the most violent cooking methods you’d ever seen. You were footsore and covered in bug bites. Your wilderness skill had leveled up twice from trekking through the woods, hunting down stray kids that refused to listen to instructions and stay with the group. It had rained on the fourth day, and all the teaching materials had gotten soaked, so all the teachers had been flying blind for the last two days.

And yet, despite everything, it had probably been the best week of your life.

But it was over. You had a real life to get back to, and a high ranked quest to complete. You’d finally break through the wall of LV 9 and join the ranks of the high leveled elite. Your actions would change the world.

You equipped your assassin’s shroud. You equipped your combat knife.

The target was conveniently separated from all the other kids, sleeping in the teacher’s cabin with their mother. You had dropped a powerful sleeping drug in their pot of spaghetti sauce, one potent enough to knock them all out for the next eight hours, come hell or high water. It was always best to minimize collateral damage. Get inside. Take the kid out into the woods. Slit their throat and hide the body. It’d be just another case of a kid who had wandered out in the middle of the night and gotten lost in the woods, never to be seen again.

The floorboards creaked softly under your feet as you approached their cot.

Then, from behind you, a voice quietly said, “so that’s your choice, huh?”

You whirled around and slashed your knife through the air, wasting your attack for this turn on the wrong target.

Sans sidestepped neatly. His eye lights glowed eerily in the darkness, illuminating his face. There was no warmth in his smile.

Enemy turn. He raised his left arm, moving his hand downwards in a lazy arc. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then someone must have dropped a piano or something on top of your head, because it felt like an invisible hand just bitch-slapped you into the ground. You grunted and tried to get up, but Sans’s eye ignited into a violent cyan and yellow flame, and the force pressing you down multiplied tenfold.

“drop the knife, kid.”

Yeah, fat chance of _that_ happening. Un-equipping your weapon in the middle of a fight was the stupidest thing you could do right now.

But then you realized that Sans wasn’t looking at you. He was looking somewhere behind you with a bead of sweat forming on his skull. You strained against the extreme gravity to crane your head over your shoulder and see who he was talking to.

It was the target. Their eyes were open and glowing red. In their right hand…was an old kitchen knife.

“We made a deal, Sans,” the child’s small, reedy voice had an incredibly scary echo.

“i know,” Sans said, sounding more tired than you’d ever heard him. “i’ll take care of it. just…drop the knife and go back to sleep, kid.”

“ _Don’t forget_ ,” the child-shaped _thing_ growled.

“i promised, didn’t i?” Sans said with a strange heaviness to his words. The not-child stared for a moment, as if weighing his words, before giving a curt nod in satisfaction and retreating back into the shadows. The red glow faded from view. There was the sound of bare feet padding across the floorboards, followed by the quiet creak of someone climbing back into bed.

Sans sighed heavily and sat down on the edge of his own cot. His left eye still flickered between cyan and gold, but it seemed a little more subdued than before. You tried again to get up, but to no avail – it was still his turn. It wouldn’t be your turn again until he finished his dialogue.

“so, a lv 9 assassin, huh? always thought they’d send someone higher leveled.”

You felt your blood freeze in your veins. How on earth…no one else should be able to see your level. If he could see your stats, then –

“How…long have you known?” you ask, despite the difficulty of breathing while being crushed into the floor.

“from the moment you walked in for an interview,” he said with a shrug, as if he hadn’t just confessed to putting children into the unsupervised care of a confirmed killer.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

He didn’t answer.

Then he chuckled. It was a low, quiet sound, full of exhaustion and bitterness.

“do you think even the worst person can change? that everyone can be a good person, if they just try?”

It was your turn to be lost for answers. What could you say to that? Your actions spoke for themselves. You realized, in hindsight, what that final, out-of-character conversation in Grillby’s had been. It had been a warning as much as it was a last ditch attempt to talk you into walking a better path.

All this time, he had _known_.

“heh. yeah, i didn’t think so either,” he said. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the blue flames and the overbearing force pressing down on you both vanished. He stood and said, “mind if we take our fight somewhere else? i don’t want to risk waking paps.”

He said it casually, as if he was just inviting you along on another trip to Grillby's, but you knew with a bone-deep certainty that if you followed him this time, one of you wasn't coming back.

You also realized with a sinking feeling that you didn’t want to kill Sans. Somewhere along the way, your irritation and dislike had become an annoyed fondness. His jokes were still terrible and his pranks were infantile and dumb, but he was also the one who always invited you along on group dinners, smoothed over any awkwardness when you first started working with monsters, and got everyone laughing whenever things got tense.

And he had done it even though he had known, all along, what you were.

And you were dangerous. Even as you hesitated, a cold part of your mind was sizing him up, trying to assess his threat level and weaknesses. He obviously lacked stamina - even holding you down for a single turn seemed to have tired him out. His shoulders were slumped, and more beads of sweat were condensing on his brow. He had dodged your off-balance slash, which meant he probably had some points in DEX, but there was no way he’d be able to evade any of your more dangerous class skills. He was obviously a magic class, and a debuff-based one at that; they were notoriously fragile and needed a party to fight properly. Without one, you could probably kill him in a single turn.

He must have known how slim his chances of winning were.

But he still wasn’t going to let you go.

And you...you liked Sans, you really did, but not enough to give up. You still had a quest to complete; clearly, something was _very_ wrong with the monster ambassador, and your gut instinct told you that everyone would be better off if they were dead.

Steeling yourself, you gave Sans a stiff nod.

You followed him out of the cabin door, and once more, your surroundings instantly shifted as he teleported you somewhere else.

Wait, what?

It was freezing, and it was dark. The ground had suddenly vanished under your feet. With a jolt, you realized you were underwater. Not just any water – Sans had teleported you into the sea. The riptide current immediately latched onto you, and you thrashed violently against it as you fought to propel yourself back towards light, and more importantly, air.

There was a quiet _ping_ as your SOUL turned blue. Your eyes widened in panic as you immediately began to sink, falling down into the depths so quickly that you could feel the water pressure crushing you from every side. Sans sank with you, floating just out of arms’ reach, his hand outstretched towards you and his eyes completely dark. The filtered moonlight gave his bones an ethereal, white glow.

You couldn’t reach him. None of your attack skills could activated underwater. There was nothing you could do during your turn except struggle futilely to swim towards the evermore distant surface.

“ _it turns out_ ,” Sans said, his voice somehow still working underwater, albeit slightly distorted, “ _that if your opponent dies from an environmental factor instead of an attack, your LV doesn’t increase. convenient, huh?_ ”

Your lungs burned as your vision started to go black around the edges.

‘ _SANS!’_ you screamed soundlessly, but there was no mercy in the depths of his pitch black eyes. Water rushed into your mouth as soon as you opened it, and you choked as it forced itself down your throat. You were out of air, and your HP was beginning to deplete. Your eyes burned as tears of panic and fear mixed in with the cold seawater.

Mercy. Mercy, _please_ , you begged with every ounce of your being, even if the words would no longer come.

“ _sorry_ ,” he said with a regretful shrug as your thrashing grew weaker. His expression was fixed in perfect stillness. “ _made that mistake once, and it ended the world.”_

Your HP dropped to zero. Your SOUL shattered.

The last thing you ever saw was the Reaper’s smile.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - FILE ERASED - - - - - - - - - - - - -


End file.
